Photography by Nasir Hamid

November, 2013

...now browsing by month

When I arrived at the Chicago dress rehearsal last week there was already a roll of film in my camera so I finished it off with some quick portraits of some of the performers before the dress rehearsal started proper. I rarely use on-camera flash in any kind of auto mode but I thought this was a good opportunity to test it out so I set the flash to TTL mode and bounced the flash from the ceiling in the corridor. I manually set the exposure on the camera to keep things consistent. These were all shot between f2 and f4.

If you’re one of the lucky people that got to see Chicago last week I’m sure these pictures will remind you how great the production was, if you didn’t manage to catch it then these pictures will show you a little of what you missed. I’ve got some very special film that I keep for special occasions and I was excited to photograph this dress rehearsal because it meant I could test out some of this film because it’s designed to be used under tungsten lighting conditions. What makes it so special is that it’s Kodak motion picture film, the same stock that is used by Hollywood studios for movies and tv shows. Under regular tungsten lighting this film can look incredible but because the colour of the lights kept changing during the performance it’s hard to get a sense of what this film is capable of rendering. I’m very pleased with these results and look forward to testing some more of it soon.

Here are some medium format film shots that I made last weekend during one of the rehearsal’s for Chicago that is on in a few days at the Keble O’Reilly theatre. This film expired in 2007 and generally high-speed film doesn’t age well so I’m very pleased with how these turned out considering the light level was incredibly low and not very contrasty. I was partly using this occasion as a test for a bright (Beattie) viewing screen that I recently installed into my Mamiya C330f camera and I’m happy to report that it’s a lot brighter and easier to focus with than the stock screen.

Some shots from a rehearsal for Chicago which is on next week at the Keble O’Reilly theatre from 20th – 23rd November. From what I saw I can tell you that it’s going to be excellent. I almost titled this post ‘adventures in grain’ because that’s something I was testing when I chose to use some Ilford Delta 3200 that expired in 2006 for this shoot and then developed it in developer that is renowned for its ability to increase film grain. I think the film coped very well considering the room where the rehearsal took place had sunlight pouring in at one end while the other end was only lit by the energy saving light bulbs hanging from the high ceiling which was quite a punishment test for this film. My thanks go to Jack Sain, the director, for allowing me to photograph during the rehearsal and I hope to do some more photography during the dress rehearsal next week.

These guys need no introduction as they feature fairly regularly on my blog, Clements & Church, the Oxford tailors. They’re some of the sharpest dressed guys in Oxford and as I pass their shop on Little Clarendon Street during my lunch time photo walk to and from town I tend to stop by there to shoot a bit of film with whatever camera I happen to have on me at the time. They’re always friendly, generous with their time and happy to chat so if you’re ever passing that way pop in and tell them you saw them on my blog.

A friend of mine (Ewan) from school has made his first feature length movie and during a visit to see him in Brighton I was treated to a private screening at a local cinema. In order to raise some funding to complete the film Ewan started a Kickstarter project to which I contributed and as a result I was listed in the thank you’s at the end of the movie. It was very cool to see my name up on a cinema screen! I travelled down on one evening and left to come home pretty much 24 hours later. The weather was mostly overcast with some rain so I didn’t manage to do a whole lot of photography but I did do a little. We had some late afternoon sun which was nice but by that time we were heading back home for dinner so I didn’t manage to photograph the sunset. The shots below are all from the same roll of film.